So I was playing though the first episode and there's definitely a lot to like about it. It's definitely a ROTT game, and it channels a fair bit of spirit from Duke 3D as well. You got a lot of freedom to explore the maps. And you got a lot of secret areas to find etc. Lots of crazy stuff, like a pinball powerup where you bounce off of the walls. And the character does some fourth wall breaking by exclaiming "this is supposed to be a powerup?!"

Unfortunately also a fair lot to dislike. But it's mostly about how the level design in the campaign seem to be made for some other game. A lot of details that clip you as you try to move through the levels and sometimes you will get stuck in it, though so far I've always managed to unstick myself with some effort. Moving through the maps is rather clumsy because they've not been built to compliment the movement of the player in any way really. You will constantly hit your head in door overheads, jump too far and short at the same time since the jumps distances hasn't been measured up against how your character moves and jumps.

Another issue is that the soldiers in quite a few instances can be quite difficult to spot as you swivel around and around looking for where the enemy shooting at you are shooting from. This partially because they are just like in ROTT from '94 rather skinny and they also blend in a lot with the backgrounds. A bit more color in the world would've gone a long way I think.

That being said, everything is in the game to make some really cool maps for it with great game play. Just that the stock maps aren't as polished for the game as one would hope. Though it's quite a lot of fun flying through the air and shooting clusters of baddies with rockets.

One nitpick on the game play would be that the rockets aren't fired from the center of the screen like in games such as Doom and Quake Live, so sometimes you will clip a rocket in the wall even if your cross hair tells you that the shot is good.

Playing SP on hard is quite difficult, which makes it all the more fun when coupled with the classic level design. All the guns feel powerful; both sound-wise and visual-wise.

The biggest downside I noticed the most is the performance issue. My system is running an overclocked Radeon HD 7950 with an Intel i5 3570K, and my FPS often drops below 30. The worst was on a multiplayer map: my framerate never went above 20FPS and often stayed around 10FPS.

My other minor complaint is with the multiplayer. Weapons don't stay on the ground when you pick them up, so more often than not players will grab all the explosive weapons on the map and you'll die several times before they reappear for you to grab. Hopefully they add an option to let the weapons always be available.

Overall the game is a ton of fun so far, but hopefully the performance issue gets fixed; the multiplayer is a bit unplayable right now on certain maps.

Whoo said:
Playing SP on hard is quite difficult, which makes it all the more fun when coupled with the classic level design. All the guns feel powerful; both sound-wise and visual-wise.

I don't find it too difficult yet though in some encounters the difficulty can spike a bit, though there are quite a few minor glitches that makes it more difficult (mostly regarding the clipping). Like once I couldn't sneak into a secret that I was pretty sure that you were supposed to crouch into. And currently I am a bit stuck as I can't seem to get into a room with a silver key in episode 2 (right after you get the baseball bat for the first time) Not sure if it's broken or if it's something I missed. But the overall glitchy nature of the game makes me expect it to be broken like that.

Anyway, I'm running it all at ludicrous settings and I am not noticing any framedrops at all. I'm not running an fps counter but the fps is solid for me, and when I play Quake for instance, I notice framedrops below 120 the moment they occur. It runs very smooth for me. (I got an Nvidia 590 though, and I am using one of the cores for Physx)

I agree about weapon stay in FFA. Something I really hate about QL's standard FFA settings is that they got a 5 second weapon respawn time making it quite easy to score cheap frags just because you happened to spawn closer to the rocket launcher or whatever. Or simply camp a weapon and keep picking it up and killing people who try to get to it.

Haven't tried it on MP myself though, when I was going to the online service was down. But it's up again now.

Honestly I don't know. It might just be the way it is with UDK and fast games. The engine has never been very good for FPS in my opinion and this is the fastest FPS I've played on it. But with the online maps and custom maps being made I expect there to be better maps out there to enjoy the game with that won't have these issues simply because the maps will be better suited for the game.

The game isn't expensive even now though. So I'd like to see people support the game just for what it is. An honest attempt at bringing the old school shooters back into the present. If this game does reasonably well, I expect we can see more games like it coming out. (They're making Shadow Warrior again as well, even though I would rather see something else being made, though beggars can't be choosers)

kristus said:
I don't find it too difficult yet though in some encounters the difficulty can spike a bit, though there are quite a few minor glitches that makes it more difficult (mostly regarding the clipping).

A lot of the time I'm finding it difficult because my missiles clip objects that don't look like they're in the way. In the time span before I get the next shot I get off, the enemies usually drain my health. Though on the other hand I think it's also because I'm more used to how much damage Doom's hitscan enemies deal and how fast they fire.

zap610 said:
I am really really tempted to get this, there wouldn't happen to be a demo for it would there?

There's not a demo, but it's still worth picking up. I'd wait for Interceptor to release a patch or two though, because the performance issue seems to be widespread; the Steam community group is full of people with high-end systems complaining about low FPS.

EDIT: Also, this:

Fiend said:
The checkpoint system makes it less fun. Especially during platforming sections that require several perfectly timed and aimed jumps over instant-kill lava or cliffs.

Given that the animations are hilariously broken at times and the enemies barely notice you (I was able to pick off so many "upcoming threats" it wasn't funny) yet they still had time to make breakable concrete pieces, tells me something went really wrong somewhere.

and for some reason, Kim Jong-Il is on every little portable TV in the game. What purpose does this serve? It doesn't even add to the campy atmosphere, it looks out of place and stupid.

And the Multiplayer is broken. We're talking spawns outside of the map, stuck inside map geometry, spawns in the middle of battle where you cannot run for cover. I get that no respawn protection is old-school, but spawns were never this ridiculously placed for such things like death upon respawn to happen.

Multiplayer may be salvaged, but holy shit there's a lot of work to do. Modding's the only thing that can save it.

Edit: What am I talking about? By the time it's fixed, the MP will be dead, just like DNF and Doom 3.

Rise Of The Triad SHOULD be a faced paced shooter with over the top gore, funny scenes and interesting/fun levels.

There's reloading and ironsights for absolutely no reason. Seriously, you have unlimited bullets and using the sights makes no difference to your speed or accuracy (it does zoom a bit). It's Brilliant.

It's also really hard. While I'm not exactly playing every ultra hard slaughter map on nightmare, I am somewhat experienced with 90's style FPS games, and I am dying a lot even on medium.

Fiend said:
The checkpoint system makes it less fun. Especially during platforming sections that require several perfectly timed and aimed jumps over instant-kill lava or cliffs.

Instant killer criteria. If there's one thing in a game that kills it for good are situations where it's easy to die and retrying takes forever.

I had this once with one of the GTA games. There was one mission that was very easy to screw up but the time to get there was several minutes of driving around the city, talking to a few people and then back in to the action - die again - rinse and repeat. That's simply not fun.

Captain Red said:
There's reloading and ironsights for absolutely no reason. Seriously, you have unlimited bullets and using the sights makes no difference to your speed or accuracy (it does zoom a bit). It's Brilliant.

It's a joke they pulled on the fact that all FPS games pretty much HAS to have iron sights and reloading these days. Even though a lot of people really don't want them.

i'm personally fine with iron sights and reloading in FPS games, since they feel like a logical extension to how you'd be able to use your guns. i feel there are other, more annoyingly implemented features in modern FPS games that could have been parodied off, like achievements and regenerating health.

Definitely a good game and gives a strong classic FPS vibe but it has a few issues that need to be ironed out, such as the mouse acceleration and certain keys on the right side of the keyboard (and mouse buttons other than mouse1-3) unable to be utilized.

I like this game even with its bugs, but it's trying to make me hate it.

The game is trolling me as hard as it can. I'm a little tired of being mocked for dying because I didn't prepare for I Wanna Be The Triad when I selected Normal skill. I'm on the NME now and I don't think I'm going to get anywhere for a while.

Haven't tried Ludicrous skill yet. It must live up to its name.

EDIT: And while playing the first level on ludicrous skill I found a secret level. And the game pulls me right back in.

From what I've seen of the game in videos, NOOOOPE. That level design looks atrocious; if they were Doom layouts, everyone here would be hating how cramped they are. Or if you weren't, your opinion would be invalid.

I'd love to support an attempt at reinvigorating classic FPSs, but I can't justify giving that support to a bad attempt. Maybe when it's on a sale.